A very personal, and eclectic, collection of wargaming plots and projects; battles and campaigns... with pictures; lotsa pictures....

Saturday, September 15, 2012

Ain't Verlinden...

At last: finished. Well, sort of finished. The Hummels have been built, painted and one of them at least has a crew - two figures from the Airfix SdKfz234/4 Armoured Car kit. This first picture was taken before 'weathering', the others after. This might not be apparent in most pictures. I have a fairly minimalist approach to weathering, though these vehicles could stand more, methinks.

Close up of the fighting compartment, with crew added. This won't win any prizes - the number could be touched up, and certain other little flaws reveal themselves. This ain't Verlinden quality modelling by any stretch. But on the whole I'm not at all unhappy with the end result.

I have found the best method of getting track to look right is glue and staple the ends together. To the objection that the staple will spoil the appearance of the vehicle, the answer is [A] make sure the stapled but is up under the superstructure overhang, and [B] paint it out with some dark colour - black, even.

As mentioned earlier, the gun came without some of the extra bits like hydraulic elevating gear, and traversing and fine adjusting wheels and handles. Figuring that as they would in general be hidden in the superstructure, I was not at first going to bother with them. I am glad I changed my mind about that. On the other hand, unlike the original ESCI kit, which moulded them in, I left off the seats either side of the gun and the boxes on the floor near the rear. Another good decision, I feel.

Vehicles 23 and 34 in battery. Well, they won't be part of the same unit for long. Brian (A Fist Full of Plastic) will get one of them; the other will remain in my own army forming a Command Decision SP battalion with 2, maybe 3, 10.5cm Wespes.

Have gun; will hunt.

Whilst working on the Hummels, I also began some repair and refurbish work on some other vehicles Brian had given me or that I had had waiting (clamouring) for my attention for some considerable time.

This Hunting Tiger just needed the tracks put on, the mudguards re-attached and the gun refitted. In painting this vehicle I discovered that 'German Cavalry Brown' is very reddish in colour. I know, I know - I ought to have used 'Chocolate' but my feeling is that it is rather a brownish sort of brown, and I did want reddish in the camo.

Rear view of JagdTiger going off to hunt something. I rather like this simplistic ESCI kit.

Also in my possession were a couple of Tigers that badly needed a refurbish. The one Brian gave me looked OK, but the paint scheme didn't 'fit' with my preferred livery. So they both got a repaint. Probably they would have benefited at that from having their original paint job stripped off, but I wasn't prepared to put up with the hassle.

I painted over the top. It shows a bit - these vehicles are a tad rough, but, seen at the usual distance one views these things on the war games table, they look rather better than these pictures indicate.

My real bugbear are the tracks. For one thing, they were put on differently for each vehicle, they were flimsy, flopped about all over the place, and the ends were untidily put together. The bad part, I discovered, was that they were apparently glued up under the overhang. At any rate, They could not be removed safely.

Faute de mieux I left them as they were, except that I glued the road wheels down onto the tracks as well. This was not a total success (as the right-hand track on Tiger 511 shows.

But the key thing is, they are Tigers. I now have the beginnings of a Tiger Company (Heavy Panzer Company 651 in the service of Orotina) which will comprise 3 Tigers (the third being a metal model from Dragon, painted Panzergrau), plus a Panzer IIIN with the short barrelled 7.5cm gun.

Further to the camo: I don't really know if the scheme I have here was ever used by the Germans. But, for mine, it looks as though it might have been. What commends itself to me is that I doubt anyone will be using it, which identifies my stuff as being mine! And, of course, it looks OK - well it does to me!

Thanks Robin. A bit of a task, and it didn't always go to plan, but ... they seem to 'work'.

If you're going the 20mm way with Spearhead, you might be doing a lot more WW2 than you anticipate. I've seen some of your WW2. Balkan War and (IIRC) Russian Civil War stuff, and they look bally good. What you do with WW2 will be interesting and informative, I feel.Cheers,Ion

Lots of nice things here. I really like the way the Hummels look - that's a great camo you have chosen.

On staples: I always staple vinyl and rubber tracks together. I have found the best way to hide the staple is to flatten it so I don't actually use the stapler to close it. Best technique I have found is to join the tracks (depending on the manufacturer this sometimes requires a bit of sticky tape to temporarily hold them together, this is just pulled off at the end). I then pin the track join over a pencil eraser and push the staple straight through the track and into the eraser using the open stapler. Then pull the stapled track out of the eraser and pinch both ends of the staple closed using small pliers. When positioned under the hull and painted you will hardly be able to see it.

Thanks for the trick with staples - that sounds like altogether a more reliable method than my own (which isn't helped by the metal bit that drives the staples being twisted on the thing I was using...).

As for the PzIV road wheels, yes... but then again, no. I had found some extras but being from a different model, were a different size. They fetched up adorning one of the Hummels. Then I discovered one of the vehicles was about 6 short. So I've decided to cannibalise the one in favour of the other. The cannibalised one might well end up being a wreckage marker - something I dislike doing, but they can be useful. Otherwise, a search through my various bits boxes might turn up something...

Dave M - I don't think I thanked for your offer of PzIV road wheels, though I thought I had. Please accept my apologies for that. I'll try and get by, though. It least I'll see what other resources are available to me here. Cheers,Ion

nice work Ion that is some fine work right there those hummels are very nice for scratch builds and the tigers are just awsome because they are tigers, do tigers need another reasone to be awsome? the camoflague patter in very reaistic and I think you were right in the choise of brown reddish brown would not have worked.

Thanks for your comments, Gowan. I think there are a few little things I might do with these vehicles, but on the whole I'm satisfied with them. I admit I viewed the whole project at the outset with trepidation that I would make a complete cock of them.

You are very kind, Paul. Yes, I believe they are Airfix models but with bits added. A local does resin castings of turret bins, mudguards and extra road wheels specifically for this model, and sells them on a semi-commercial basis. The previous owners of these made the additions, I am guessing using that resource.

Geordie, I see have become the 67th follower of this blogspot. Thank you for that (and to all 'my' followers as well). It is the more appreciated as I have been led to discover new and interesting blogsspots to follow myself!Cheers,Ion

Thank you 'Red Cardinal'! They'll do for my wargames; I'm happy with them to that extent - more than happy, actually - but I am aware that they wouldn't win any prizes. Not that I would ever offer them up for competition except upon the wargames battlefield!Cheers,Ion